Jose Y Marcia Caula:

1868 President Andrew Johnson impeached

The U.S. House of Representatives votes 11 articles of impeachment against President Andrew Johnson, nine of which cite Johnson’s removal of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, a violation of the Tenure of Office Act. The House vote made President Johnson the first president to be impeached in U.S. history.

At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Andrew Johnson, a senator from Tennessee, was the only U.S. senator from a seceding state who remained loyal to the Union. In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln appointed him military governor of Tennessee, and in 1864 he was elected vice president of the United States. Sworn in as president after Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, President Johnson enacted a lenient Reconstruction policy for the defeated South, including almost total amnesty to ex-Confederates, a program of rapid restoration of U.S.-state status for the seceded states, and the approval of new, local Southern governments, which were able to legislate “Black Codes” that preserved the system of slavery in all but its name.

The Republican-dominated Congress greatly opposed Johnson’s Reconstruction program and in March 1867 passed the Tenure of Office Act over the president’s veto. The bill prohibited the president from removing officials confirmed by the Senate without senatorial approval and was designed to shield members of Johnson’s Cabinet like Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, who had been a leading Republican radical in the Lincoln administration. In the fall of 1867, President Johnson attempted to test the constitutionality of the act by replacing Stanton with General Ulysses S. Grant. However, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to rule on the case, and Grant turned the office back to Stanton after the Senate passed a measure in protest of the dismissal.

On February 21, 1868, Johnson decided to rid himself of Stanton once and for all and appointed General Lorenzo Thomas, an individual far less favorable to the Congress than Grant, as secretary of war. Stanton refused to yield, barricading himself in his office, and the House of Representatives, which had already discussed impeachment after Johnson’s first dismissal of Stanton, initiated formal impeachment proceedings against the president. On February 24, Johnson was impeached, and on March 13 his impeachment trial began in the Senate under the direction of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase. The trial ended on May 26 with Johnson’s opponents narrowly failing to achieve the two-thirds majority necessary to convict him.

Ted Cruz Is Asked If He’s ‘One of Those’ Who Doesn’t Believe President Obama Is a Christian. Here’s How He Responds.

When Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was asked Saturday if he’s “one of those” who doesn’t believe Barack Obama is a Christian, the GOP presidential candidate said he wouldn’t speculate on Obama’s spirituality.

“The president’s faith is between him and God,” Cruz told reporters in Des Moines, Iowa, the

Sen. Ted Cruz (Image source: The Huffington Post)

But Cruz did comment about Obama’s policies, which he said “have been profoundly damaging to this country.”

“His policies and this administration’s animosity to religious liberty and, in fact, antagonism to Christians, has been one of the most troubling aspects of the Obama administration,” Cruz said. “We have seen a war on faith.”

WJ: Watch: Obama Finally Had To Respond To Trump. Here’s The 9 Words He Said…

“America’s winning right now. America is great right now,” President Obama told the Business Roundtable on Wednesday, responding to Trump’s catchphrases without a direct mention of the Republican front-runner.

Obama also took a page out of Trump’s book in terms of hard rhetoric against China and the issues he will raise when he welcomes Chinese President Xi Jinping to the White House next week.

Obama then said the nations can have a dialogue“as long as we don’t resort to the kind of loose talk and name-calling I notice some of our presidential candidates engage in. It tends not to be constructive.”

“If I become president, we will do something really special. We will make this country greater than ever before,” Trump said.

Trump also offered a stark disagreement with Obama about the world’s perception of America.

“The world will respect us. They will respect us like never before. And it will be actually a friendlier world,” Trump said at the debate.

WELL, MAYBE JUST NOT SO RELEVANT!

Quintin George

Obama Just Gave the Stupidest Advice Ever During Alaska Visit

President Obama burned thousands of gallons of jet fuel getting to Alaska so he could rename a mountain that already had a name and promote his global warming agenda in the coldest state in America.

During a speech he gave to the residents of Kotzebue, a town 26 miles north of the Arctic Circle, he touted the benefits of solarand other “clean” energies as the answers to their high energy costs and unemployment.

“Because energy costs are pretty severe up here, for remote Alaskan communities, one of the biggest problems is high energy costs,” the president said.

“One of the reasons I came up here is to really focus on what is probably the biggest challenge our planet faces. If there’s one thing that threatens opportunity and prosperity for everybody, wherever we live, it’s the threat of a changing climate,” said Obama.

One thing that may have slipped Obama’s notice, however, is that many towns in northern Alaska get six hours or less of sunlight during the winter. In fact, in Barrow, which is the northernmost town in Alaska, residents go 67 days a year without ever seeing the sun.

Como las cosas siguen cambiando en Cuba!!!

Jose Y Marcia Caula

Cuba Arrests 50 Catholic Dissidents as Pope Francis’ Visit Nears

The Cuban government’s now-ritual weekly arrests of pro-democracy dissidents continued on the last Sunday before Pope Francis lands on the Caribbean island, with more than 50 Catholic protesters arrested after attending weekly Mass.

The arrests occurred in Havana following a Catholic Mass largely attended by the Ladies in White dissident group. The group–composed of mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives of prisoners of conscience–is predominantly Catholic and attends Mass in white every Sunday. They follow the religious rite with a march through the streets of Havana, often holding signs about their loved ones. This Sunday, they were accompanied by members of a separate dissident group, the Cuban Patriotic Union. Forty Ladies in White and ten allies were arrested and shipped to prison in buses, with the images showing violent treatment towards the women by Cuban officials.

Reports claimthe women were arrested for marching in an “unauthorized” street in Havana. Many were released hours later after spending time in jail. The Cuban government has made a habit of these short-term arrests, only to re-detain the same protesters the next Sunday. The Castro regime has increased its arrest activity this year in response to the increased popularity of attending Catholic Mass in silence for dissidents. This year, Cuba increased the number of political arrests by 70 percent between February and March alone.

The Ladies in White intend to attend the Pope’s Mass in Havana next weekend, said leader Berta Soler. “What I would tell the Pope,” she told Reuters, “is that political violence against people who want to participate or exercise their liberty in public assemblies must stop.”

The head of the Cuban Patriotic Union, José Daniel Ferrer, echoed her sentiments: “The Church should be concerned about this or any time human rights are involved. It is their duty.” Ferrer was arrested this Sunday while marching with the Ladies in White.

The Catholic Church has largely stayed out of the Cuban struggle for democracy, with Ladies in White activists growing increasingly critical of Cuban Archbishop Jaime Ortega’s silence on the issue. At least one churchhas banned the women from attending Mass at all, despite the local priest’s admission that they do not disturb the Mass in any way, save for wearing white. The women are commonly subjected to a number of degrading acts, including men urinating in front of them and being tarredby angry communist mobs.

When asked directlyabout the Cuban government’s oppression of its Catholic population, Pope Francis told a reporter this July, “There are some countries and also some European countries where you cannot make a sign of religion, for different reasons, and on other continents the same.” The Pope’s relationship with Cuba remains warm despite these attacks on Catholics; he is largely credited for helping President Obama decide to make major concessions to the Castro regime last December, and Raúl Castro has saidhe personally likes the Pope so much that “if he continues this way, [he] will return to the Catholic Church.”

As an alleged gesture of goodwill, the Cuban government will release more than 3,000 prisoners in anticipation of the Pope’s visit to Cuba. They have made clear that none of these will be prisoners of conscience–in communist terms, those who have committed “crimes against national security.” Most will be among the youngest and oldest in the prison system.

Pope Francis will arrive in Cuba on September 19 and is scheduled to give Mass in Havana and the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba.